


What Makes a Mother? What Makes a Monster?

by t0talcha0s



Category: BioShock
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, mention of messed-up circumstances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5449775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've seen good bunco, and I've seen great bunco. But, when you waltz through Rapture and World War Two without even a scratch? ... She's damaged goods, all right. Just like all those chumps they scraped out of them prison camps. But she's no crackpot.<br/>- Frank Fontaine on Brigid Tenenbaum</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes a Mother? What Makes a Monster?

**Author's Note:**

> "What makes something like me? I look at genes all day long, and never do I see the blueprint of sin. I could blame the Germans, but in truth, I did not find tormentors in the Prison Camp, but kindred spirits. These children I brutalized have awoken something inside that for most is beautiful and natural, but in me, is an abomination... my maternal instinct."  
> -Brigid Tenenbaum, Maternal Instinct

The air was cold, but it was always cold nowadays, and it hung placid and stagnant, as if somehow beneath the thrashing waves Rapture had found stillness. Brigid Tenenbaum stood in her apartment in Olympus Heights, the day had been long, the work laborious. She and Suchong were in the midst of a breakthrough, the heavy workload was to be expected. The stresses of her day sat below her eyes, in stark relief to her pale, sunlight-deprived skin. The mirror in front of her reflected clearly back her worn, overworked features. Thin nose, green eyes, brown hair, pale skin, it should add up to create something beautiful but Brigid didn't like what she saw in her reflection. 

Brigid could trace the passage of her every trait through her genes, had done so before just for shits and giggles when the workload had been slimmer and more monotonous. She couldn't find the building blocks for the creature she saw in the polished glass in the twisting combinations of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. She knows one gene can determine the makeup of an entire being. DNA it was makes her, nothing more, the blueprints for her life deciding what and how she is to be, but all Brigid cares about is _why._

The creature remains without explanation. 

Suchong would say she was a product of her environment, World War II and now Rapture. Brigid doesn't believe a word of it, and she'd describe Suchong with a few words her mother would have scolded her for using. Perhaps she has something guiding her, but she believes in no god, and there are no gods or kings in Rapture. So as she stares at this creature in the mirror she can find no kinship with it. 

Her hands clutch the sink until her knuckles are bone-white, her eyes bore holes into the mirror. She traces familiar bone structure, a face she's known for year, indifferent, aging features. Anger wraps around her lungs, steals her breath, pure rage in her gut at the vision, she detests it. She remembers this feeling, it was somehow new to her in Rapture, she had shoved one of her bastard creations off her lap, saw the ADAM on the little one's mouth and the wrongness in her eyes. Looking at the child she was struck to the core with hatred. The same hatred found in this reflection, no it is not the child she hates. 

Her breaths she tries to steady, refuses to grasp and paw at calm like she were some mad, desperate man. She attempts to whip and demand her emotions into shape, but the jarring gasp that releases from her throat surprises her. Brigid Tenenbaum does not break down, she is not weak. When she was offered a bodyguard to keep her safe from the Saturnine when she said she was to visit Julie Langford in Arcadia she declined. When she implanted those innocent children with slugs to make them monsters she barely batted an eye. When she began her work for her captors in the prison camps her demeanor, even as a child, a wonder-child, was disinterested at best. Brigid Tenenbaum is strong, unbroken, ruthless, she is not weak. 

Brigid Tenenbaum is unafraid of her reflection, or so she likes to think. 

Her mind spins, her eyes feel full and tight, what makes something like her? Why is she the way she is? Why, through all that's happened, hasn't she just died yet?

Her knuckles ache, a sensation cutting through her numbness. Her gaze shifts from her unseeing glare at the mirror to her hands, the hands which have damned so many people. Long, thin, talented fingers good for lab work. Why can they do nothing but awful things? 

Brigid releases her grip on the sink, she lets out a breath that stutters on its way out. The mirror, just like her genes, shows no blueprint of sin, her past shows no reason for her actions yet Brigid still remains a natural abomination. 

She can't name this feeling inside of her, never felt it before, it's a fury she's never experienced, just as monstrous as she knows she is. Brigid never wanted to be a mother, but the image in her reflection tells her she already is.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's just all ignore how the summary is two separate audio diaries smashed together. 
> 
> I am so livid at the shortness of this. 
> 
> My tumblr is barefootcosplayer


End file.
